Will Trump’s midterm convention bring GOP voters to the polls?

DALLAS—A woman wearing a red headband and a blue and white dress meandered among the crowds exiting American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas, last Thursday night. Directing her phone camera toward the people bustling around her, Lilian Kumba Damacha Miatta Sandi, an immigrant from West Africa, documented the final moments of the Republican National Committee’s first-ever midterm convention.

Sandi told me she drove from New York to be there: “It took us a day and six hours. So I haven’t slept in that long. You see, my eyes are red.”

Sandi said she moved to the United States and became a naturalized citizen over 20 years ago. The first time Sandi had the chance to vote in a presidential election, she cast her ballot for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Now, she says she wants the Republicans to win the midterm elections and keep control of Congress.

“If the Democrats win, I’m sorry to say, it’s just lawlessness. They have no morals,” said Sandi. “The Republicans make more sense, it’s just common sense. That’s it.”

Sandi is one example of the kind of voters the Republican Party is trying to energize ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The Republican National Committee’s convention last week lasted two days, hosted dozens of speakers, and drew in a rambunctious crowd—some decked out in cowboy hats and sequin dresses colored red, white, and blue. From President Donald Trump’s keynote address Wednesday night to Vice President J.D. Vance’s closing remarks Thursday, the message was clear: Republicans must win big on Nov. 3. And the convention offered a glimpse into what GOP leadership is willing to do to make that happen.

In his 90-minute keynote address Wednesday, Trump said he would visit every congressional district with a competitive midterm race—approximately 35, he said. The president also promised to issue a dividend of $5,000 to every adult citizen in the United States if Republicans maintain their majority in Congress. And he told voters to act like he was on the ballot.

“No matter how well you’re doing, we see not a president, Democrat or Republican, almost never wins the midterms. We’ve got to change that,” said Trump. “So I’m gonna ask you to pretend that I’m on the ballot. … Because if we lose you’re going to lose your order, you’re going to lose your tax cuts, you’re going to lose your safety and security. You’re gonna lose your wealth.”

It’s not uncommon for national politics to play a role in midterm elections. In fact, the Democratic National Committee, which reportedly will not host a midterm convention this year, held such conventions in 1974, 1978, and 1982. Even so, since 1938, the party of the sitting president, whether Republican or Democrat, has lost seats in the House of Representatives in 20 out of 22 midterm elections.

President Trump’s efforts to break that trend started almost a year ago.

In a December podcast appearance, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles blamed Republicans’ 2025 off-year losses on Trump’s absence from the ballot.

“Typically, in the midterms, it’s not about who’s sitting in the White House,” Wiles told the hosts of The Mom View podcast. “You localize the election, and you keep federal officials out of it. We’re actually going to turn that on its head and put him on the ballot, because so many of those low-propensity voters are Trump voters.”

Regardless of who’s on the ballot, the outcome of the midterms is still uncertain. Not everyone is convinced the GOP convention will make a meaningful difference at the polls come November.

“President Trump is trying to help excite and mobilize Republicans, but political science research suggests rallies like these tend to have little-to-no effect by the time election day rolls around,” wrote Matthew Beckmann, professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Pushing the Agenda: Presidential Leadership in U.S. Lawmaking, in an email. “The swings tend to come from the small slice of people who are not especially partisan, breaking one way or the other.”

For those in attendance, Trump’s midterm strategy appeared to work. The crowd responded enthusiastically to the president and other speakers. On Thursday evening, the audience went wild when Vance responded to a protester waving a Mexican flag, saying, “Well, my friend, if you love Mexico so much get your [obscenity] over there. I’ll buy you the plane ticket.”

But the conference also fell on a week of sober anniversaries. Conservative political activist Charlie Kirk was shot one year ago on Sept. 10, and Friday marked 25 years since the 9/11 attacks. In Dallas, several speakers reflected on both events, and Vance even mentioned Kirk as an example of a voter who may struggle to support every part of the Republican agenda.

“Charlie hated war,” said Vance. “Do what Charlie did. Do not throw the baby out with the bath water. … Don’t give the country over to a bunch of crazy people, because you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here and there.”

In his Thursday speech, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, named prominent Democratic candidates such as Senate nominees Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and James Talarico in Texas. Cruz noted that not every Democrat in the House and Senate is in line with candidates such as these, but he argued that “they are all afraid of these radicals.”

At least one Democratic congressman aligned with Cruz’s analysis. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania made a surprise appearance at the RNC convention via a pre-recorded video on Wednesday night. Wearing his signature hoodie, Fetterman introduced his Republican colleague, Sen. Dave McCormick, and appeared to criticize his own party, saying, “I will always stand for America, reject the extremes, socialism, and that anti-American way of life.”

The crowd responded enthusiastically to Fetterman’s willingness to cross party lines.

“I think we’re all humans, and there’s no Democrat and Republican really,” Seena Nanda, an attendee from Texas, told me. “It’s just one person taking care of each other, and that’s what [Fetterman] was just showing today. So, I think that’s beautiful.”

Many attendees traveled from states away to attend the Republican convention. Vikki Consiglio, dressed in a sparkly cowboy hat, traveled from Georgia. Another guest, Monica Ladner, hailed from Mississippi. On the final day of the conference, two Californians—84-year-old Evelyn Lundin and her daughter, Marie—joined a crowd of women waving American flags behind Trump on the stage.

“We gotta win. That’s just it,” said Lundin.

“I met a lot of people who had very inconveniently, in the middle of an election, come here for the purpose of rallying the base,” said Kristi Hamrick, who attended the convention on behalf of the pro-life nonprofit Students for Life of America, where she serves as vice president of media and policy. “I talked to one guy and he had Seattle Seahawks season tickets, and he was giving up a game so that he could come.”

Last Wednesday, Students for Life and 38 other life-focused groups sent a letter to the Trump administration, asking for a return on investment for pro-life voters’ support. Hamrick told me that at the RNC convention, the only speaker she heard mention the life issue was Pastor Jack Graham, who offered up a prayer from the stage Wednesday night.

“While I was glad to see a pastor praying and talking about pre-born babies in a prayer, we need to talk about it again from the main stage, not just in a prayer,” said Hamrick. “We’re excited for the economy to be stronger. We’re excited for the nation to be stronger. But on the moral issues and on the heart of family, and the protection of life, from conception to natural death—that was just MIA. And that was a missed opportunity for the GOP.”

Sandi also told me she “did not hear specifically about abortion” but that, as someone who picked up an extra job to support her pregnant 19-year-old daughter, “I just believe that abortion should be abandoned.”

The midterm elections are less than two months away, and several tight races and ballot initiatives—including abortion-relation items like Virginia’s Amendment 1—will determine which party holds the power in upcoming years and which issues hold political sway.

In his closing remarks on Thursday, Trump asked the crowd to raise their right hand and pledge to vote come Nov. 3. “Are you ready?” Trump said, eliciting a chorus of cheers.

“We swear that on Nov. 3rd we are going to go out and vote … so help me God,” said Trump, as the audience echoed his words. Laughter shook the room as he added, “You know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to hell.”